Funeral crowd of Islamic leader behind anti-French protests in Pakistan – News

The authorities did not report on the number of participants at the funeral, which takes place in Lahore (east), but according to local observers it reached hundreds of thousands of people, most without complying with the mandatory use of a mask to hold a second wave of pandemic threatening Pakistan.

Khadim Hussain Rizvi, 54, who founded Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) in 2015, an influential extremist movement, died Thursday in a Lahore hospital due to breathing difficulties and a high fever.

The causes of death are unknown and no covid-19 test or autopsy was performed.

“Ever seen such an important funeral for a political or religious figure?” Asked one attendee. “Of course, the movement will survive,” Farhad Abbasi added.

Khadim Hussain Rizvi was behind the frequent protests against the French who have been agitating Pakistan since September, after the re-publication of the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed by the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.

The death of the founder came just days after the TLP movement mobilized several thousand people outside Islamabad to protest against the statements of French President Emmanuel Macron, who defended the right to the ‘cartoon’ in the name of freedom of expression, during a tribute to a teacher who died after showing the cartoons of Mohammed to his students.

Khadim Hussain Rizvi’s message may also have inspired Zaheer Hassan Mahmoud, the Pakistani man accused of seriously injuring two people with a bladed weapon, near the old Charlie Hebdo headquarters in September in Paris. According to the French court, this Pakistani will have “watched a lot” of TLP videos.

Several senior Pakistani government officials, including Prime Minister Imran Khan, offered their condolences to the cleric’s family, testifying to his influence on Pakistani society.

“In a way, he was even more dangerous than the Taliban, his supporters are not limited to remote tribal areas, they are in large numbers in the main centers of the country,” observes Omar Waraich of Amnesty International.

Rizvi said that “in Pakistan real power can come from the streets, where a majority of the voters are not needed, but simply a large number of armed supporters”.